Ethnogenesis in the Pyrenees: The Contentious Making of a National Identity in the Basque Country (1643–2017)

Abstract

Focusing on the Basque case study, this article adopts a historical longue-durée perspective over more than two centuries (nineteenth and twentieth) in order to better identify the dialectic in the process of identity formation and change of a small European, stateless community, separated by a borderline and living in two different political, socioeconomic and cultural settings. The political expression of this long process of Basque ‘ethnogenesis’ (A.D. Smith) was the rise of the nationalist movement in the Spanish Basque Country at the end of the nineteenth century. By tracing the analysis of Basque identity back to pre-modern times and following its path to the present, this article aims to produce new insights into the factors that trigger the crucial moments of identity change that bring to an end previous periods of stability. Its epistemological fundaments are connected to some prominent topics that have been widely discussed by historians and other social scientists concerned with nationalism and national identity (the cultural shape of national identities; ‘modernists’ versus ‘ethno-symbolists’; nationalism and political religion; national identity and political violence).